§ Snuff––tobacco
leaves ground into powder and snorted up the nostrils––was a
popular way of getting a nicotine hit in European countries
from the 17th century until the early 20th, when mass-produced
cigarettes
began to dominate the market. In Nausicaa Gerty
disapproves of her mother using snuff, apparently to treat her
migraines: "And when her mother had those raging splitting
headaches who was it rubbed the menthol cone on her forehead
but Gerty though she didn’t like her mother’s taking
pinches of snuff and that was the only single thing they
ever had words about, taking snuff." Some snuff
manufacturers claimed palliative or curative properties for
their product, but health concerns like nasal cancer had also
long been on people's minds. Perhaps Gerty is concerned about
her mother's health, or it may simply be that, having
experienced the violence of an alcoholic father, she does not
like to see her use drugs.
§ In
traditional wakes, the two-or three-day vigils held between
washing the corpse and burying it, families supplied clay pipes,
leaf tobacco, and snuff for the people who attended. The
tobacco had some ceremonial purpose: men were expected to take
at least one puff to help ward off evil spirits. But the snuff
seems to have been more like free cocaine at a party. An
expensive adjunct to the poteen and porter, it no doubt
contributed to the festive atmosphere in the night hours and
probably helped people stay awake. A bowl of snuff was often
placed on the chest of the deceased, bringing people back to
the dear departed whenever they wanted their next bump of
nicotine. When depleted it was refilled.
The "snuff at a wake" expression derives from this tradition
of liberally supplying free drugs to mourners. Brewer's
Dictionary of Irish Phrase and Fable remarks that it
indicates "profusion, as in 'In Houlihan's last night he was
throwing money round him like snuff at a wake'." Similarly, P.
W. Joyce writes in English As We Speak It in Ireland
(1910) that "If any commodity is supplied plentifully it is
knocked about like snuff at a wake. Snuff was supplied free at
wakes; and the people were not sparing of it as they got it
for nothing" (139). In a page on James Joyce Online Notes
Harald Beck quotes from Joyce and two other sources indicating
that the expression could be used as an idiom for "abundance":
"New buckskins, as my grandfather was a gentleman; new
brogues, new coat, new everything––the signs of money flying
about him like snuff at a wake" (Illustrated Dublin Journal
28 December 1862); "Advice to take up Americans, pay for them,
and hold them, is 'flung about like snuff at a wake'" (United
States Investor, 14 May 1898).
References like these clearly exemplify the sense of bounty,
but some other meaning must be involved when Bloom thinks that
the old beggar selling shoelaces on the side of the road was
once prosperous: "Terrible comedown, poor wretch! Kicked
about like snuff at a wake." Here the phrase seems to
imply indifference or even contempt for something of no worth.
Beck notes that other such pejorative uses can be found. From
the Freeman's Journal of 19 June 1844, he quotes a
comical account of police abuse: "is that any reason why I am
to be robbed of my liberty, strapped on a stretcher, and
thrown about from policeman to policeman like snuff at a wake
(laughter)?" From Brendan Behan's 1958 play The Hostage
he quotes three lines: "I really think us lower-middle
classes, / Get thrown around just like snuff at a wake. /
Employers take us for a set of asses."
What could account for this alternate meaning? Getting things
for free does often make people devalue them, but still it
seems odd that a phrase derived from expensive hospitality
should come to imply contemptuous indifference. A missing link
in this strange evolution may perhaps be found in another use
of the expression. Beck quotes a descriptive passage with
uncanny relevance to Ulysses: "the masts bindin' like
switches an' the sails in smithereens, an' the life buoys
flyin' about like snuff at a wake" (Emigrant Soldier's
Gazette, 19 February 1859). Bloom thinks something
remarkably similar in Nausicaa when he contemplates
the "Dreadful life sailors have": "bit of a handkerchief sail,
pitched about like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do
blow." The meaning here does not seem to be "abundance,"
as Beck suggests, but rather violent disturbance, and traces
of that meaning can be heard in the propulsively energetic
verbs that seem invariably to be applied to "snuff at a wake":
"kicked about," "knocked about," "pitched about", "thrown
about," "flung about," "flying about."
I do not know of any text that offers definitive evidence of
how this sense of explosive energy came about, but context may
suffice. Traditional peasant wakes were boisterous affairs.
Anyone could attend, so the death room could be quite crowded.
Food was passed around in the daylight hours, and in the
evenings mourners got drunk. Women cried freely and engaged in
loud keening.
People sang, played games, recited poetry, danced, and told
funny stories about the departed. Men played tricks like
hiding under the coffin and shaking it to scare new arrivals,
or lifting it up to show their strength. Debates arose, often
on heated topics like religion and politics. In the ballad
that inspired Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Tim Finnegan is
laid out with "A gallon of whiskey at his feet" and "A barrel
of porter at his head." People start arguing, and then advance
to brawling: "Woman to woman and man to man / Shillelagh-law
was all the rage / And a row and a ruction soon began." A
thrown bottle of whiskey spills liquor over Tim, causing the
corpse to rise up: "Thunderin' Jaysus! Do you think I'm dead?"
To this picture of riotous pagan excess (Catholic authorities
strongly disapproved of wakes) may be added one more detail:
inhaling snuff up the nostrils typically brought on thunderous
sneezes. If one imagines people in these crowded rooms
circling around the corpse to take more snuff, passing the
powder around, violently sneezing, and filling the room with
swirling clouds of powdered tobacco, the thought of a
gale-tossed ship being "pitched about like snuff at a wake"
starts to make sense.
